I just love the Iowa State Fair.
We live in Wisconsin, but I’m not a big fan of our fair. It feels too urban, being located in Milwaukee. I only went once, when I was pregnant with Miss, and don’t care to go back. The Iowa State Fair, on the other hand, is just delightful.
When we go, we don’t do some of the typical fair things, like riding rides and playing games on the midway. My girls are a little too small for most of them, and I am a little iffy about fair rides. So we don’t even go down that way.
Mostly, we look at animals.
My girls are crazy about animals.
The girls listed their favorites from the day to include ostriches, elk, fish, cows, horses, swans, and wood ducks.
And the Big Yellow Slide, of course.
My favorite part of the day with them was our time in the DNR building. They were fascinated by the tanks full of fish and asked what types of fish were in each one.
Sis had fallen asleep in the stroller so we had lots of time to look at and talk about all the fish.
In the same building there was also an area with many animal pelts hanging together. We went through them all, and I asked the girls to name the animals. They were able to name every one except the woodchuck (which I couldn’t name either). They got obvious ones like the beaver, skunk, and raccoon. But also the bobcat, otter, badger (once I showed them the head), red and grey foxes, and opossum.
I don’t know why, but it tickled me immensely that they were able to name those animal hides.
And to top it off, we went outside to the DNR’s “pond” and had a blast watching the swans, geese, and ducks as they splashed and played in the water. This seemed like the biggest hit of the day in terms of the time the girls wanted to spend there.
Or maybe the biggest hit of the day was the food.
These girls have never had so much “junk food” in one day in their lives.
It was such a special day.
